<p>I recently heard a med student saying that he doesn't attend med school classes because they are just a waste of time. Is that true? I aso remember NCG saying here that he doesn't go to some lectures. If some, if not all, med school classes are useless, then why do they exist and continue to get offered? Why do some people still attend all their classes? Is it possible for med students to do extremely well (be in top 5%) without going to lectures or listening to lecture recordings?</p>
<p>I didn’t say the lectures are worthless. I just don’t attend them in person. I listen to each and every lecture from home.</p>
<p>There’re differing opinions. Some people don’t go to class. Others show up at every class without fail. Most people are somewhere in the middle. It depends on your learning style and (to some degree, I think) the instructor. I think it’s definitely possible to do really well without going to class. I almost always go, but sometimes it amazes me how much studying I can get done if I don’t go, and there have been times when I needed the study time more than I needed to go to lecture. My main problem is that I despise listening to the lectures online. They’re not particularly engaging when I’m sitting in the lecture hall, but watching an entire lecture online (rather than just re-listening to a section of the lecture) isn’t something that I could stand to do every day. Besides, I start to feel anti-social and cooped in if I don’t go to class.</p>
<p>I’d say a lot of it depends on the prof giving the lecture. Some are really good, and we run out of seats. Others are terrible, and spending that time in the library is more productive. I go to class because I get lonely, and if I watched the lectures from bed or after they’d been archived on the internet, I’d end up starting my day around noon pretty consistently. Not a great idea.</p>
<p>Clarification: at least in all the med schools I know people at, there’s no classes “offered” - which to me implies that you somehow have a choice in what to take during the first two years. The topics taught at most med schools are largely extremely similar in nature/content because most schools are teaching towards the USMLE Step 1. </p>
<p>What I’ve seen, is medical students often think the “common sense” or “soft subjects” tend to frustrate students the most because they can’t see how that’s the stuff they’re actually going to use every day when they’re in the clinical years. Typically the thinking is, “well this stuff isn’t hard, so it must not be important, and if it’s not important, why am I learning it?” When you’re a second year and only seeing patients with your preceptor or in the student run clinic, it’s hard to see the utility in understanding biostats so you can explain test results to patients, it’s impossible to see why you’re being taught how to break bad news, and you don’t realize how assessing a child’s development is essentially another vital sign in pediatrics…yet those are all things that taught outside of the basic science courses. </p>
<p>In terms of worth of lecture, it all boils down to what I’ve said many times before about knowing your learning style and being open to change if you aren’t getting results. If you aren’t getting anything out of lecture, why go? As a second year, I skipped my hour of pharmacology lecture every single day. All we got tested on was name, class, mechanism, and side effects…all things that were usually very clear on the notes provided, why did I need to sit in class for an hour and have someone read that information to me? So I would go and work out instead before the campus gym got too busy, which was a much better use of my time.</p>
<p>I’d say I’ve attended about 98-99% of all non-required lectures in medical school. I do it for several reasons.</p>
<p>1) Seeing it + hearing it = good way to learn, for me. (Not true for everyone. I have classmates who get nothing out of lecture - they prefer to learn some other way, like reading books.)</p>
<p>2) Like SonofOpie, it keeps me on a morning schedule. I’m not a morning person - I like sleeping from 2-12, but that doesn’t work on the days when I have to get up early for required courses. It’s just better for me to be used to getting up in the morning.</p>
<p>3) I go for my own mental health. I get paranoid when I don’t go to lecture - I think that I might’ve missed something, that something important didn’t get taped, or that the taper didn’t do a good job and record all the drawings clearly. Even if it wasn’t a good lecture, I feel better because I know I didn’t miss anything.</p>
<p>I go to lectures until I can figure out if its worth it to continue, based on content, the professor teaching it, etc. For some courses I make it to all the classes, and others I almost never go, and prefer to study on my own. Like others have said, it really boils down to how different people learn best.</p>
<p>Today, I went to class for the first time in nearly 2 months (pretty proud of myself). </p>
<p>There were a couple of units where I went to 50% of the classes and the rest of the units I basically did not go to class. In fact, my best test score came on the unit where I only attended 1 out of the 50 lectures. </p>
<p>I still get a lot out of lecture. I listen to each and every lecture that’s taped. And I basically never use the textbooks, except for clarification.</p>
<p>Different people have different methods of studying. My med school class is pretty good about attending lecture though. I’d say that we have 90%+ lecture attendance. </p>
<p>Someone has to play the role of “The Missing:”</p>
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<p>I’m “the twelve-year-old”, easily.</p>
<p>to add another dimension to the question: do you find that you attend lectures in med school with similar frequency to undergrad, more often or less often? </p>
<p>in undergrad (and grad school) i religiously went to lecture…much like shades_children i get paranoid that i missed something if i don’t go to lecture. did your habits carry over from undergrad or did u reevaluate lecture attendance in med school?</p>
<p>My studying habits in med school are nothing like my habits in undergrad. In undergrad, I attended pretty much every lecture and also did most of the assigned textbook readings. In medical school, I don’t really use the textbooks and as mentioned before I’ve attended only about 1/4 of the lectures so far in person. One simple reason: the lectures in med school are recorded. </p>
<p>As you can tell, I’m not gunning for plastics/derm and I’m not one of the tippy top students in the class. It’s not hard to identify who those students are. There are people who I never see at social events and who don’t seem to participate in any extracurriculars and who pull off 98% on every test. I’m sure they’ll get into a high powered residency but that’s not the way I’ve chosen to approach med school. I’m still fairly involved in EC’s: I’m co-chair of AMSA at my school, co-president of the radiology interest group, I mentor disadvantaged HS kids on Wednesdays, co-authored a review paper for a peer-review journal (never want to do that again), play intramural ultimate frisbee, and I was just awarded the Schweitzer Fellowship to develop and expand an organization I co-founded this year and my biggest EC…dating! Unlike most of my classmates, I actually started a new relationship after coming to med school. None of this helps for residency apps and all of this takes time away from studying but I think it’s good to have some activities that make you feel human once in a while. </p>
<p>My grades are okay with this kind of studying. My worst test score has been 85% and highest has been 97%. I’m somewhere in the bottom of the top third of my class. The average USMLE score at my school is 230+ so if I can score at the average or higher, I should be good to go for a radiology residency. It might not be UCSF or Mass Gen but it should be decent.</p>
<p>Edit: As for being too paranoid about missing something, we are tested on 50 lectures at a time so there’s 2 questions per lecture. I can live with not knowing every single detail.</p>